A Soldier's Journey Home
by toe walker
Summary: Percy is returning from a battle to his loving family but is haunted by the things that he has seen there. One shot. Complete AU, no gods, focusing mostly on percy. Rick Riordan owns all of the characters but i own the plot and story.


**Heeeeey guys... Its been... 5 months? hehe... UMMM hi. I was really and truly going through some bad personal stuff and wasn't really reading or writing at all other than what was necessary (it got to hard to create, like creating stories or crating images in my head. I got into some tv shows instead. ex: Supernatural, Merlin, and Sherlock. ::::DDDD) but i am hopefully back in the game now. I am going to try to ease back into it and hopefully get back to updating my stuff fairly regularly but we will see how it goes.**

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**This is actually something I wrote for School, it is meant to imitate Gothicism/Romanticism from the 19th century, using especially american themes (blood on the soil, based in the wilderness, lots of emotion, ect.) There are no names but I did loosley base it on some pjo characters so I decided to put it up here.**

**Caracters:**

**The soldier- Percy**

**The soldier's friend- a Male Bianca (not to be sexist at all but it just fits the story better)**

**The soldier's wife- Annabeth**

**The soldier's daughter- fairly obviously Percy and Annabeth's kid.**

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A Soldier's Journey Home

Snowfall in the forest is something to behold; the entire wood becomes encased in a white cocoon of cold. Blankets of freezing crystals that seep through even the sturdiest of boots cover every surface and yet make a person feel so serene and safe that they do not bother to look over their shoulders.

The soldier was heading back home to his beautiful wife and young daughter three days early, hoping to surprise his daughter on the eve of her seventh birthday. The young soldier smiled as the first few snowflakes of the season fell in front of him; he shivered and wrapped his coat closer around himself and quickened his pace, he still had a ways to go and his shoulder was beginning to bother him.

The soldier hated to think about his shoulder, it reminded him of his failure. His injury stopped him from being there at the moment of his best friend's death on the battlefield; if he had been there then maybe he could have saved his friend from the crossbow bolt that lodged itself in his stomach. It should not have been his friend to die; his friend was not even meant to be on the battlefield that day. Somebody had to take the place of the wounded soldier and the task went to the good man who died that horrid day. It should have been that soldier who was conveniently out of the picture on the day of that battle to die. He leaned against a nearby tree and rested for a moment, massaging his shoulder and allowing his eyelashes to drop farther and farther toward his cheekbones.

When his eyelashes once again stretched for his eyebrows, he seemed to have a small layer of white powder covering the entire length of his body and the sun seemed to have suddenly hidden from his searching eyes. He chuckled at his idiocy, stood up, and, shaking the ice crystals from his body, faced the direction of his house once again.

As he walked he noticed a sharp pain coming from his abdomen, and looked down to see a stick just the size and shape of a crossbow bolt protruding from his stomach, just where the hole had been on the corpse of his friend. He shrugged and walked on, hoping to reach his house before his daughter went to bed for the night.

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Blood bounces quite strikingly on snow, not only because of the obvious color discrepancy, but the large difference in temperature. Snow however is temporary. Even as such a striking change is made in the previously unruffled surface, it is trying to cover it up with more layers of the same, even as the soldier fell for the final time in the snow, new layers began to fall upon him once again as they had when he had allowed his eyes to droop for a minute. This time, his eyes would not search for the sun once again, but as they fell closed they caught sight of a lamp in a window, illuminating a rocking chair holding the two people he loved most in the world. Even as he saw his beloved home on earth, the soldier began a new journey, a journey to his true home in the sky. Or well, I think it is a home, maybe it is a hotel or a closet, you never quite know do you? Well, not until you get there at least.

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The young girl, now seven, laughed as she ran through the thick trees over the mounds of crisp snow. Her mother smiled as she jumped over a larger hill of the white, only to stumble on the other side and fall. The shivering girl ran back to her mother and inside to the fireplace. The mother could not help but think of snow and its bright yet veiled disposition. How beautiful it is, to hide such a cold sting.

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**Thank you for reading and i would appreciate reviews... They really do make me very happy.**

**~Toe**


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